


Coming Round The Mountain

by Merixcil



Category: Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Future Fic, Gen, M/M, mentions of police brutality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 16:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16664593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: A familiar face shows up where he doesn't want it, prompting Holdaway to take action over the sins of his past





	Coming Round The Mountain

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't seen the Reservoir Dogs deleted scenes before, I would recommend watching [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjXhaXbT9cc) before you start as one of the characters in it features heavily in this fic

Portland’s mighty cold past October. One of these years, Holdaway’s gonna come up with a good excuse to close the precinct a week before Halloween and keep the doors shut till Spring hits.

“And miss all the spooky fun?” Robinson looks up from the cake that’s being passed around the bullpen. The second of November sales have kicked in and everyone’s rolling in candy as supermarkets concede that they won’t shift the last of the Halloween stock in time for Christmas unless they start slashing prices.

And as far as those vultures are concerned, Christmas starts now.

“Ain’t you got a case to be working? Some vandalism shit?” Holdaway asks, hawking over Robinson in a feeble assertion of his presumptive authority.

Robinson rolls his eyes. “Please. Every cop in the country has some vandalism shit on their plate right now. Halloween, man. What is it about masks that makes teenagers act like that?”

“Oh it ain’t just teenagers. Back when I was running Vice in LA I saw cops – good cops, mind. Real straight edge types – get so caught up in the role that they did shit worse than the guys they were supposed to be bringing in. I’m talking murder, drugs, rape. Sharing police records with their new scumbag friends and doctoring information to help them get away with shit. Soon as people start playing a role, they start thinking different. Most of the kids we bring in over the next few days will be perfect angels three hundred and sixty four days a year.”

Wrinkling his nose, Robinson takes another bite of cake. “Or, they’re little shits all the time but Halloween lets them take advantage of half-baked anonymity.”

Holdaway laughs. “Or that.” He pulls up a seat and asks to see the incident report and any digital evidence. Robinson clicks slowly between windows. Truth is, being a Captain’s kinda dull. Ninety percent of the job is sitting on your ass, waiting for a detective to bring a job to you.

“Why’d you quit Vice, anyway?” Robinson asks. He’s a middling detective, great at paperwork and bad at critical thinking. He’s tall, ginger, and about ten years older than the rest of his colleagues, his peers having moved on to greener pastures some time ago.

“Needed a change of scenery.”

“I’ll say. But ain’t it kinda boring doing this sorta work?”

“Course it is! I took the job because I was promised boring.” Holdaway reaches for a road safety manual hanging off Robinson’s desk and uses it to smack him lightly on the head. “Vice ain’t pretty.”

“How come?”

“For all those reasons I just said, motherfucker! Was you not listening?”

“Yeah but like, you get used to it. Right?”

“Nuh uh. I watched this kid in my division, real promising talent, take a bullet and throw it all away. I knew then, I’d had enough.”

“He died?”

“Hell no he did not die. Freddy fucking Newandyke did not die. He hopped into the passenger seat of the vintage Cadillac his shit stain jewel thief boyfriend was driving and they floored it to the border. We got word of the two of them visiting a doctor or two to patch him up, but he was out of jurisdiction and, being an undercover cop, our key witness to the crime we coulda brought him in on. No way the Mexicans were gonna extradite.”

Robinson doesn’t have the face for shock, a slight raising of the eyebrows is all he can manage. “No shit?”

“Swear to God.”

They settle into silence, punctuated by Robinson pointing towards various key pieces of information as they flash up on the screen. Holdaway tries to keep half an eye on the rest of the bullpen and mostly fails. He hasn’t thought about Freddy Newandyke in a long ass time. In the twenty six years since the LA PD showed up five minutes too late to do anything about the bodies of Joe Cabot and a loose collection of other lowlifes he’s started to forget the details of the case, robbing what memories he does have of any urgency. He knows Freddy and his pal didn’t take the diamonds and he knows that the bullet that killed Joe Cabot was police issue, but beyond that he doesn’t really remember how it all worked out.

All that was left was the testimony of the rat looking cracker who was scared enough of what the judicial system would do to him to say anything. Useless.

Robinson grunts in surprise and Holdaway rushes back into himself, reaching for his glasses. “What have you got?”

“Video of the kids responsible at a local diner. McNab musta pulled it and got it up on the database. Or I gotta assume it’s the right kids. They leave at nine twenty one which gives them time to get to the crime scene and the costumes all match up.

“Sounds about right.” Holdaway slides his chair up to Robinson’s screen. “Show me.”

The video’s blurry, like you wouldn’t have thought possible given the fact that every camcorder and phone these days sees the world in crisp digital specs. Still, Holdaway can make out the trio of boys sat at the table next to the door, masks pulled down but otherwise recognisable as The Joker, one of the new Star Wars characters and some Netflix thing. They finish necking their milkshakes and make to leave, visibly laughing at each other though there’s no sound.

“That’s good.” Holdaway claps Robinson on the shoulder. “That’s real good. You know where this place is?”

“Sure, down on Oakley.”

“Go ask around, see if the staff know these kids. You might need to follow up with local schools.”

“Aye, aye, Cap.” Robinson grabs his coat and in five minutes he’s out the door.

The stretch of relevant footage, carefully isolated by the guys in IT, is left running on a loop. Holdaway’s eyes glaze over, watching the kids finish up their meal and leave. His attention wanders to the waitress who runs in front of the camera at the twenty second mark, making the journey up to a pair of college aged girls who are wearing just enough dark eye makeup for it to be clear that they’re off to a Halloween party.

At the next table, a middle aged man and an old guy are pressed up close like they’re a shade more than friendly, sharing a tray of fries. Smiling, clearly having a good night but like they could be having a good night wherever they were so long as the conversation didn’t pack in.

The middle aged guy is so familiar, even through the fuzz of the security footage. Holdaway runs through old acquaintances and celebrities in his head, trying to find a look alike.

At first, he thinks he’s just being nostalgic, letting the past catch up to him. Then he decides that it couldn’t possibly be anyone else and swears loud enough for the whole precinct to pay attention. The overlarge nose, the slightly wonky eyes, the hunch to his shoulders.

“You ok there, Captain?” Asks Deeprose.

Holdaway nods very slowly, beckoning her over. “I need you to go through national police records, see if you can find a Frances Fercetti and a Jody McCluskey. Woulda been working Major Crimes in LA back in ninety two.”

Deeprose blinks. “Sorry sir, what am I looking for?”

“Contact details!” Holdaway side-eyes her. “Obviously! I need to get hold of one or both of them by the end of the day.”

 

 

 

Ferccetti is dead, which ain’t no surprise. Heart attack got him a few years back. McCluskey’s still kicking around though, running a drug task force in San Francisco and something of a local celebrity.

“Holdaway?” She drawls down the phone. “Jesus, I ain’t seen you in about a minute.”

“Gotta be about twenty years.” Holdaway leans back in his chair, staring at the stains on his office ceiling. In his mind’s eye, McCluskey still has a burger in her mouth, spilling ketchup down her front. “How you been?”

“Busy. But I can’t complain. Where are you these days?”

“Up in Portland, running my own precinct.”

“Fancy.” McCluskey replies. “But sorry if I gotta feeling that you wouldn’t have called me if you didn’t have something you needed to say.”

“I need a second pair of eyes on some security footage pulled from a diner up here. You’re about the last person left who might be able to help me out.”

“You can’t ask one of your guys to do it?”

Clicking his tongue, Holdaway runs the footage on his computer screen back, triple quadruple checking that he’s very fucking clear on what he’s about to ask. “Not with this one. McCluskey, do you remember Freddy Newandyke?”

You don’t always gotta be in the same room as someone to smell the air going sour around them. “Yeah.” McCluskey growls. “Yeah, I remember Freddy Newandyke.”

“See, I’m looking at this security footage from a diner up here and there’s a guy in the back – I swear on God he looks just like him. Older than he was but twenty six years can do that to a guy. I was hoping to you could take a look, make sure I’m not losing my head up here.”

“Yeah. Yes, of course.” The sound of something heavy hitting the carpet reverberates down the line. “Fuck! You know how bad I wanna kick that bastard's teeth in?”

“Tell me about it.”

“How many of our men died over that botched heist?”

“Six. Including the guy in the warehouse.”

“The guy in the warehouse.” McCluskey’s voice simmers just below rage. “Yeah, send me the footage and I’ll take a look. Lemme tell you, if it looks like you really got Newandyke back on your hands, I’m flying up to Oregon to help bring him in.”

Could be kinda fun. Holdaway lets himself smile. “I appreciate it, Jody.”

 

 

 

The manager at the diner is about to blow a fuse. “I spoke to one of your detectives this morning! What the hell is goin’ on?”

“That was for a different case.” Holdaway explains. “Halloween, man. A lotta people got on someone’s bad side.”

For his first out of office interview in over a month, Holdaway has pulled out his least ratty blue suit. The collar itches against his neck and it contrasts far too aggressively with the grey of his hair, but it makes him look professional and the colour reminds everyone that he’s police.

The manager nods for him to continue. She’s a dark, scrawny little thing that could be anywhere between thirty five and seventy.

“On the evening of the thirty first, between the hours of eight fifty two and nine forty, you had two men seated at that table.” Holdaway jabs his pen at the spot Newakdyke had occupied in the security footage.

The manager shrugs. “What about ‘em?”

“You know ‘em? They regulars?”

“Seein’ as I don’t really know who the hell you’re talkin’ about, that’s kinda hard for me to say.”

Reaching for the print out he’s had cleaned up by Digital Evidence, Holdaway holds it out for her to take. “These two.”

She squints, takes a minute. A shake of the head becomes an uncertain wobble. “Hard to tell when the picture’s this fuzzy, but if it’s the guys I’m thinking of, they’ve been in a couple of days this week.”

“You know anything about them?”

“Not a bit. Pair of queers, but who isn’t these days?”

“Imma give you my number. You catch them back in here, you call me.” Holdaway trades the print out for his card.

He looks towards the table up at the back, trying to remember what a young Freddy Newandyke would have looked like sat across from him. Jumping out of his seat on every second word, about ready to die from over excitement, talking about fucking supervillains rather than looking at the evidence in front of his stupid huge nose.

When all’s said and done, the six officers that went and got themselves killed over this shit splashed their blood all over Holdaway’s hands as well.

 

 

 

 _It’s him._ McCluskey’s email form is brilliant in its simplicity. _When do you want me?_

_We don’t have an address, just a diner that he’s been seen at a couple of times. There’s no guarantee he’ll be back anytime soon, so you should sit tight and wait till we know what we’re dealing with._

The phone rings three minutes later and Holdaway doesn’t have to check the number to know it’s her.

“Like fuck I’m hanging around here with that piece of shit on the loose. You expect to call me five minutes before you bust his ass and then tell me you gave me ample warning? I don’t think so.”

Holdaway grins into his coffee. “When do I gotta send someone to pick your ass up from the airport?”

“Ten o’clock in the am. See you in the morning, Captain.” The line clicks dead.

 

 

 

Despite the contrary evidence provided by Google images, Holdaway’s still expecting McCluskey to show up with the peroxide blonde bob she was sporting two decades ago. He’s prepared for the laugh lines, but the pantsuit and the long, grey streaked brown hair throw him as she walks into his office.

“Almost didn’t recognise you there.” He holds out a hand for her to shake. Technically, she outranks him but she drops a lazy salute before taking it, surveying him with curious intensity.

“Well, I ain't about to forget your face in a hurry. You mighta gained a few pounds, and you’re hair’s more salt than pepper but otherwise you look about the same.”

“You know what they say, black don’t crack.”

“You better hope it don’t. What have we got?”

Holdaway opens up the more or less barren file he has open on the case, which is pretty rich considering he hasn’t even declared it an investigation yet. He returns to the video and McCluskey leans over his shoulder, scrutinising it like she’s never seen it before, eyes narrowing over each of the patrons and following any and all paths of movement with a finger.

“Him and his buddy have been at this diner a couple of nights this past week. I put out the word that I’m looking for him, but we gotta keep it quiet for now. Everything comes right back to me. ” Holdaway explains

“And?”

“So far, not much. Got a call yesterday but he was gone before I caught up to it.”

“Sounds like he’s still in the area.” McCluskey thumps Holdaway’s shoulder. “We’re gonna get this sonofabitch.”

“I reckon so.” It’s been a while since Holdaway really had something to chase after. The thrum of excitement as he closes in on his prey sits deep in his gut and he could swear this is what he was born to do. To hell with the psych evals that said he was better suited to desk work.

They pick through what little else he knows, running through what's what and piecing together the parts of town that feed into Oakley. Holdaway rambles till he runs out of words and the air goes brittle around them.

McCluskey clicks her tongue, universal code for an officer looking for something to say. “So…I mean, I don't wanna sound like I'm accusing you of something here. But how sure were you about Newandyke when you sent him out on the Cabot job?” Blunt, perhaps. But fair. It's not like he got round to debriefing her on the case. He took the slap on the wrist he got for setting a lamb amongst the wolves like it was anything like just deserts and then he sulked until he plucked up the courage to leave LA.

Freddy Newandyke was supposed to be off the case as soon as he started whining about the lack of backup he was gonna have in the warehouse, but that conversation ended almost immediately when Holdaway got him in a headlock and assured him he was the right man for the job. His lack of doubt, perhaps, was most damning.

So he grimaces like he’s still kicking himself over it. “Kid was a live wire. Like I said back then, I shoulda put an end to it, but we were so keen to get Cabot.”

“Tell me about it. I hope you ain’t wasted too much of these past years beating yourself up over this shit, though. You had a fish to catch and you used the bait available. Weren’t your fault it went bad.” McCluskey sounds like she’s trying to convince herself more than anything. She wouldn’t be the first, plenty of guys from back then swore they’d never say another word to Holdaway as long as they lived for his part in the slaughter of their colleagues

The sharpened still of Newandyke and the guy he was with at the diner fills the desktop screen. Lopsided face, heavy eyelids, overlarge nose. He’s lost the naïve glint in his eye that made him so easy to like.

McCluskey traces a finger over the other guy. “Who d’you reckon he’s with?”

“Best guess?” Clicking away from the picture, Holdaway dips into the intranet archive for everything pre ninety nine. He brings up a record that he knows McCluskey recognises by her shocked laughter. She once printed this out for him and Newandyke, brought it out to them at some middle of nowhere Big Kahuna joint while they were hashing out the details of the case.

She takes a minute to recover, tripping over her tongue with nervous energy. “You think he’s still travelling with Dimmick?”

“Age difference checks out, and this guy has the right kind of build. Nose more or less matches from what I can see, and mouth. Harder to tell with the eyes, what with the glasses.”

“His hair’s properly white.”

“Right.”

“Huh.” McCluskey lets out a whistle, resting her weight on the back of Holdaway’s chair. “Them being together that long, ain’t that kinda…”

Holdaway cocks an eyebrow. “Kinda what?”

“Gay?” A twist of the lips, like she doesn’t like thinking about it or she feels bad for suggesting it. Or she feels bad for thinking it might be bad. Modern progressivism takes its toll on everyone.

Freddy Newandyke had the collective interest of every red blooded female on the Force to play with, and he never so much as flirted. His eyes lingered on the torn knuckles of every Joe Average who came through the door after a bar fight and he never gave a concrete answer when asked what he’d been up to on his days off. Anyone taking him for straight should have their Detective rank revoked.

Holdaway clicks back to the picture from the video. “Yeah. I’d say Newandyke was always kinda gay.”

 

 

 

The plan is simple, because the plan is borderline non-existent. Stake out the diner, stay by the phone, catch Newandyke as quickly as damn possible. McCluskey plays coy when asked how much time she can spend away from San Francisco like she had to Shawshank her way out of town and Holdaway makes excuses with the Commissioner when asked why he’s not scheduled himself for any evening shifts that week. Another call comes in about another possible Newandyke sighting and the lead pitters out before their eyes.

“Did he know you were onto him?” Holdaway asks, wearily.

The officer who made the call, a young guy, caught out of uniform and all the better for it, shuffles his feet like a badly behaved child. “No, sir.”

“He’s still in town!” McCluskey says with far more enthusiasm than Holdaway has for fruitless call outs. “C’mon, let’s get going.”

They get to the diner on the cutting edge of dinner time and bundle themselves into a back booth. Having come out straight from the precinct, McCluskey looks out of place in her work casual wear and for once, Holdaway gets to feel smug that he’s wearing a Hendrix tshirt beneath his shirt and tie.

McCluskey blinks. “Didn’t you have that shirt back in Vice?”

“Oh, I had it way before Vice. You still like burgers?”

To Holdaway’s delight, the past quarter century has taught Jody McCluskey nothing about table manners. He almost tells her to slow down as she tears into bread and meat like it’s her last meal, remind her that they’re on an unofficial stakeout and need good reason to camp out in this booth for the rest of the evening.

They’re sat side on to the door, easy pickings when watching for approaching customers. The manager brings them a couple more cokes, pausing when she sees Holdaway like she’s not sure if she’s supposed tor recongise him. He hushes her and sends her back behind the counter.

McCluskey raises an eyebrow. “You got an admirer.”

“Please. She knows me, she just don’t know what I look like out of uniform. You know how it is.”

The conversation spirals out to talk of partners and children, interrupted every time the door swings open. McCluskey’s married with two kids that she’s impressively well involved with for a career cop. Holdaway rattles off the details of his very broken marriage, sliding right under the pointed question of what happened to his non-existent kids.

She looks at him with the same thinly veiled pity all parents have for the childless. Screw her. Distant colleagues have fuck all right to tell him he made a mistake when he didn’t become a father. He spent long enough looking after kids straight out of the academy to know he didn’t want to bring that shit home.

They circle back to ninety two, and the warehouse painted in Officer Newandyke’s blood.

“You know where the two we caught wound up?” Holdaway asks.

McCluskey nods. “The driver spend about a month in a minimum security hospital while he got over a concussion. Charged with accessory to murder but didn't do more than six years in county before they let him out. The guy we caught with the diamonds is still banged up in state.”

To be expected but still hard to wrap his head around. Holdaway winces. “Shit, that’s a long time in the can.”

“Yeah, well. He killed two cops, plus time for the heist. He had a pretty big debt to pay.”

“He must be up for parole soon though.”

“Probably. I should keep an eye out for him, see if he makes his way to San Francisco. I’d give him a real life sentence if he crossed me.” McCluskey smirks.

That’s not good. Holdaway doesn’t return the smile but he skips the lecture on the rule of law for the sake of the Force issued pistol strapped to his ankle. There’s shit that officers shouldn’t do, and as he’s concerned, gunning folk down in the street is one of them.

They wait and wait. Till they’ve drunk as much coke as they can and more than outstayed their welcomed. Holdaway slaps down a fistful of cash from the Captain’s petty cash box. This place is about to get rich off this case and they don’t even know it.

 

 

 

Five days later, petty cash is almost empty and McCluskey has used up all her goodwill in San Francisco. Holdaway gets a call from a furious city Commissioner at nine am on a Monday, demanding she be sent home, and the straw meets the camel’s back.

“You gotta get your ass outta here!” He bellows when she starts babbling about extra holiday time she could use and the faith her CO has in her.

McCluskey barely fucking pauses. “He’s still in town!”

“Probably!” Holdaway rubs at his temple, an action he’s starting to realise he inherited from his grandfather. “But you ain’t gonna be around to catch him.”

“You got no right telling me how to do my job. Those men he killed were my friends too.”

“And what d’you think happens if every damn cop in the country starts claiming a personal right to bring in the guy that killed their buddies?” Holdaway relishes the boom that echoes through the precinct when the flat of his hand makes contact with the top of his desk. “Get your ass back to San Francisco before I get the Commissionner back on the phone. You do not want that disciplinary, McCluskey.”

She pulls back. Good. Holdaway doesn’t owe her shit. Jody McCluskey storms out of the seventeenth Portland precinct and he’s under no illusions that he’ll ever see her again. He’ll know where to find her though, he can keep watch, from a distance.

An hour later, when the dust has somewhat settled and Holdaway has reissued his call to the beat cars, asking them to keep an eye out for middle aged men with greying blonde hair who overextend their hands when they talk, Robinson sticks his head round the door.

“Come in. At ease. Sit Down. You know the drill.” Holdaway beckons. He could use the distraction, someone over at the ninth precinct is up his ass about misallocation of resources.

Robinson collapses into the chair opposite the desk, a loose collection of limbs with zero muscle tension holding them together. “I gotta talk to you about this Austin Green case.”

“What’s there to talk about? It’s a public space! Tell that Ramirez woman that she can’t be building barbecue pits on public ground and move on.”

“There’s complications.” Robinson grimaces. “Some old contract shit. It’s gonna get violent if we don’t get the Poltons out of there.”

“Of course it is.” Hands up in surrender, Holdaway falls back in his chair. He will never know peace.

There are no easy answers. The sullen ticking of the clock fills the silence and that’s all anyone’s getting from Holdaway today. Robinson fidgets, tapping his feet in arrhythmic patterns against the caret. “Captain?”

“Yes, detective?”

“The case you and that San Francisco woman was working, you fix that up?”

“Not yet.”

Robinson nods. “It’s fucking you up, man. You should take a couple of days off from doing our jobs for us and get it sorted.”

“Thank you for your input.” Holdaway waves the matter aside, so fucking sick of sticking himself in the past. “In the meantime, we gotta work out how to fix your Ramirez problem.”

 

 

 

Life takes you to stranger places than you would direct it. Without fail, every damn time. Holdaway fills his next day off with important grown up bullshit that he doesn’t enjoy but can’t live without. Shopping for one, even for a week, doesn’t take up that much space in the trunk of his car and he has to pack up glass bottles with jumpers to keep them from rolling.

There are always glass bottles, the slide into old age is like that. .

“Hey, Larry, gimme that! I said give it here! You’re gonna break your damn back, old man.”

Scent is supposed to be the most powerful mnemonic, but maybe that happens in reverse too. At the sound of that voice, Holdaway can smell burgers and cigarettes, the uncomfortable plastic kick of overwarm concrete, the butcher’s shop at the end of the road where his mom lived in Oakland.

He looks to the car next to him, an innocuous little hatch back in dark blue. A couple of guys are wrestling shopping bags into the back, grinning at each other as they trade good natured insults.

It’s cold but it’s sunny, and they’re both decked out in sunglasses and leather jackets. One older, his hair white. The younger guy sporting fading blonde.

Holdaway doesn’t have his cuffs on him, or his gun. He has nothing but the stupid ass look on his face, waiting for Newandyke to recognise him.

“Hey!” Holdaway calls over to them. “You dropped something.” He leans down to pick up the abandoned bottle of washing up liquid. Essential.

“Hey, thanks man.” Newandyke holds out a hand to take it.

It takes him a moment, but when he gets it, he gets it. The sunshine smile vanishes, replaced with nervous panic. “Larry, get in the car.”

“There a problem?” Dimmick looks over at the two of them, his hair barely an inch longer than it was in his last mugshot.

“Just…get in the car, please. Be with you in a minute.”

The car door slides home with a soft thump, leaving Holdaway and Newandyke alone in the crisp November air. In a fucking Walmart parking lot, because of course.

“Hey there.” Holdaway starts and immediately runs out of anything clever to say.

“Holy shit.” Newandyke steps back, voice hushes and a hand balling in his hair. “What the fuck? What are you doing here?”

“Living. Working. You know the drill.” Holdaway shrugs like his heart isn’t dancing a jive over his ribcage. Freddy Newandyke, famed turncoat, the scourge of LA Vice, is just some guy. Out getting groceries with his inappropriately aged boyfriend. The deaths of six officers, arguably twelve civilians, are on him and he never sat a day in prison for it.

Newandyke’s face drains of colour. “You’re still a cop?”

“Course I’m still a cop. I ain’t no good to be anything else.”

“So, uh, how does this work? I mean, you gonna drag me off? Shit. I ain’t never been to prison before.”

“An on duty police officer would beat you ass and the ass of Lawrence Dimmick who I know you got in that car there, then take you down to the station and ring you for every confession you could think up. I’m talking writing you for every time you jaywalked, watched a movie you didn’t pay for or smoked weed before that got all legalised. They would see about getting you the longest sentence a hand on the judge’s dick can buy.” In his head, Holdaway always screamed, but in real life his voice comes out real casual, like he’s discussing the weather. The stupid kid who let it all get away from him deserved a good talking to, but this guy doesn’t feel the same.

He always was a good detective though, good at putting two and two together even if his common sense was lacking to say the least. If he’d had a shade more personal identity, beyond the comic books and the television shows, he might have been the best thing that ever happened to LA Vice.

Crazy how fine that balance is.

Newandyke nods slowly. “And an off duty cop?”

Holdaway shrugs. “An off duty cop’s not exactly law bound to do shit. There’s something to be said for honour, though. My people sure would like to hear about you. I’ve been breathing down their necks to find your ass for two weeks now.”

“Can’t be all that good at their jobs then.” Newandyke ventures a smile.

Holdaway doesn’t return it, but he doesn’t hit him in the mouth either. “Listen, man, I don’t know why you thought you might be safe back on American soil. But if you know what’s good for you, you’ll be out of town by sunset.”

It’s not gonna be long before he hates himself for saying it. If Holdaway had his badge on him, there’s no telling which way he might have let this slide. They’re not friends, they probably never were, but maybe putting an old man away for the rest of his life and a middle aged guy away for most of the rest of his life for some shit that ain’t exactly fresh in the memory is cruel.

He can see it, in the anguish on Newandyke’s face, that he wanted this to be it. He wanted to stop moving. The guy took a shot to the gut and had to live through it, maybe that’s enough. He nods, backing up to his car and slipping a hand underneath the handle.

“See you round, Freddy.” Holdaway waves as the door closes and the engine fires up. He watches, his trunk still wide open, as Newandyke and Dimmick pull away, the tell-tale strains of the local oldies radio station hanging in the air like smoke.

Holdaway takes a shaky breath and braces himself against the lid of the trunk as he brings it down. He needs to quit this shit. Today, tomorrow, forever and for the rest of his life. He heads home, along roads that seem to be bursting with dark blue hatchbacks and faces he doesn’t recognise. Nothing feels any different and he’s not sure it was really supposed to.

The stupidest thing, the fucking end point of this bullshit, is Holdaway laughing as he pulls into his drive. Fishing pizza and beer out of the back of his trunk like it’s any old day of the week. He wishes he’d told Newandyke to stay out of San Francisco and he wishes he’d asking what happened at that fucking warehouse. But that small fry shit is for the birds.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love! Come find me on [tumblr](http://jeffersonhairpie.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/chadfuture_)
> 
> I've also been posting a few things on the old [ResDogs kink meme](https://resdog-kink.dreamwidth.org/1225.html) because I'm hungry for content. If anyone else would like to see it active again, do please come join me


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